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NEW BOOKS. 



The Fern Garden : How to Make, Keep, and Enjoy it. By Shirley 

 Hibberd. (Groombridge and Sons.) — This is a small volume, of an unpretending 

 nature, intended more especially for the guidance of beginners in fern-culture. 

 All technicalities, and the difficulties of classification, have been avoided by the 

 simple arrangement adopted from first to last. The cultivation of ferns is the 

 theme. The chapters severally treat on collecting ferns from the wood?, the forma- 

 tion of out-door ferneries and the construction of fern-houses ; the cultivation of 

 rock, wall, and marsh ferns ; the management of fern cases ; the multiplication of 

 ferns ; the proper treatment of tree-ferns, g.Jd and silver ferns ; greenhouse, stove, 

 and hardy ferns ; and the fern allies, comprising Lycopodiums, mosses, etc., etc. 

 The following is extracted from the chapter on stove and greenhouse ferns : — 



CULTIVATION OF GREENHOUSE AND STOVE FERNS. 



" Practically the only difference in the management of the ferns of the green- 

 house and the stove from those of the frame or cool fernhouse consists in the 

 increase of temperature proportioned to the character of the climates in which 

 greenhouse and siove ferns are found growing wild. Various as are the climates 

 and conditions in which ferns thrive on dilferent paits of the earth's surface, they 

 all become amenable to conditions nearly uniform when subjected to cultivation. 

 Give the must delicate fern of the tropics treatment similar to what is advised for 

 our native ferns, but with a higher temperature at every season of the year, and 

 the chances are full ten to one that it will succeed perfectly. But undoubtedly 

 it requires some judgment to assimilate conditions in the midst of which there 

 occurs this important difference of temperature, and so we cannot expect to dispose 

 of the subject of this chapter in any offhand or very general manner. However, we 

 must beg the reader to recall the main points of our advice to this extent, that for 

 outdoor, for frame, and for cool-house ferns, we have constantly recommended the 

 use of a granular and mellow, loamy or peaty soil, a considerable degree of 

 atmospheric humidity, shade from strong sunshine, and, in some cases, a very 

 subdued daylight, as the conditions under which success is most likely to be 

 secured. These several requisites are to be considered of the utmost importance in 

 the cultivation of tender ferns, and the more so that the farther plants of any kind 

 are removed from the circumstances natural to them, the more anxious should the 

 cultivator be to provide for all their wants. 



'' It is a common thing to see ferns and flowering plants mixed together in the 

 same greenhouse or conservatory. It is quite possible to grow them well when 

 so associated, but so few are equal to the task that when we meet with ferns and 

 flowers in the same house, we usually find one or both in a deplorable condition of 

 disease or imperfect development. 



"Ferns love shade and flowers love sunshine. Ferns thrive best in a still air, 

 flowers usually require a moving atmosphere, and many kinds that are most highly 

 prized need abundant ventilation. As to atmospheric humidity, while ferns with 

 very few exceptions enjoy abundance of it, there are not many kinds of flowers 

 capable of enduring without injury the degree of aeiial moisture that would benefit 

 the growth of ferns. These are important considerations which we are bound to 

 place before the reader at this juncture, for indiscriminate associations of plants in 

 stoves and greenhouses are the causes of many and bitter disappointments. While 

 this matter is before us, however, it should be said that if due care be exercised, 

 many kinds of ilowering plants may be grown in the same houses with ferns, if 

 the selection is made judiciously in the first instance, and the best positions as to 

 air, light, etc., are selected for them. Thus, as to sorts, it will be found that 

 camellias, azaleas, cyclamens, primulas, liliums, oleas, and statices, are well adapted 

 to associate with greenhouse ferns, if the sunniest positions are assigned them ; on 

 the other hand, heaths, pelargoniums, echeverias, epiphyllums, boronias, epacris, 

 and kalosanthes, are far less suitable, needing more air and sunshine than most 

 ferns could endure without injury. It must be remembered, however, that many 

 beautiful plants, such as palms, for example, may be grown with ferns to afford 

 variety, and the same routine of treatment will suit bcth. In the stove it is com- 

 mon enough to find achimenes, gloxinias, alocasias, caladiums, begonias, gesneras, 



